Abrupt Climate Change is offered to students who are interested in understanding the impact of radically altering climate upon their lives and communicating this information to society through artistic media of their choice. To better prepare for their success in an increasingly uncertain future, students will hear from academic experts in business, law, mathematical, physical and social sciences and then create artistic responses to humanity’s greatest existential threat.
Abrupt Climate Change is open to undergraduates at New York University.
Course Description:
This lecture course is designed for students who are interested in developing a deeper understanding of the forces that contribute to a changing planet and in investigating the impact of a radically changing biosphere on their lives and on their communities. The course supports student efforts to link scientific research with creative practice to find innovative responses to the issues presented in class.
There are no prerequisites for this class. Students with an interest or background in mathematics and/or physical sciences are welcomed as are story-tellers of all disciplines. Working knowledge of any personal computer video editing system is suggested. Students wishing to learn video editing will find step-by-step instructions within NYU’s licensed tutorials.
Students are required to set up and maintain a web journal (using NYU’s WordPress portal) with weekly written assignments. Written work must include links to all referenced sources as well as to embed images and videos. Weekly posts and creative responses to presentations, assigned videos, and articles are required.
Final projects may either be sole or group authorship, use media of the student’s choice, and must be shared with the NYU community. Students are encouraged to use their cell phones as still and video cameras for data acquisition. Computers with video editing programs are available at a number of stations at NYU’s Washington Square campus as well as on many student computers. In addition to free video editing software, trial and deeply discounted student licenses are also available for video editing.
Statement of Purpose
The scientific community’s consensus is that Earth’s climate is changing and that the change is linked to the burning of fossil fuels due to the concomitant release of gaseous by-products into our atmosphere. What is the subject of continuing research is the rate at which climate changes will accelerate. What we do know is that the majority of peer-reviewed papers reference positive feedback mechanisms which will increase a warming climate for many years to come.
In 2004 as part of a $60 million dollar effort to study abrupt changes to our climate, a US Senate Committee defined abrupt climate change to be, “a change in the climate that occurs so rapidly or unexpectedly that human or natural systems have difficulty adapting to the climate as changed.” Studies in Greenland ice core samples have revealed that there have been at least twenty instances which would qualify where earth’s climate has changed 15˚ Fahrenheit (8˚ C) within a 10-year period.
As of October 2019, atmospheric carbon dioxide measured 408.55 ppm (parts per million). The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees grew in Antarctica, Greenland was largely ice-free, our planet’s surface was five degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and sea levels were thirty-two to sixty-five feet higher than they are today.
Governments and human beings neither possess the experience or technology to successfully sustain life as we have come to know it during a period of rapidly changing conditions whose sustained new global normal is simply without human historical precedent.
Scientists are not artists. Sanguine reporting of the painstakingly gathered information is the duty of the scientist. It is the artist who is able to — and who must — bridge the divide between science and the public through creative storytelling.
— Peter Terezakis, October 2019